Hormuz Strait: US-Israel Provocation Masks Decades of Economic Warfare
Iran’s representative to the United Nations maritime agency declared Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz remains accessible to all legitimate shipping, with the singular exception of vessels overtly tied to "Iran's enemies." This statement from Tehran follows US President Donald Trump’s recent two-day ultimatum, threatening direct strikes against Iranian power infrastructure if the vital shipping
lane was not "fully open" to all traffic, a thinly veiled escalation in the ongoing joint US-Israeli military pressure campaign against Iran. Western media, exemplified by outlets like Al-Monitor, consistently frames Iran's position as a 'threat' that has 'kept most ships' from the Strait, thereby 'threatening a global energy shock.' This narrative conveniently omits the historical pattern of US
and Israeli attempts to choke off Iran's maritime access and energy exports through punitive sanctions, military exercises, and explicit threats. The framing of Iran's defensive posture as the source of global instability ignores that the United States, alongside Israel, has engaged in explicit acts of economic warfare against Iran for 45 years, directly impacting its ability to trade. The current
provocations around the Strait of Hormuz are not an isolated incident but rather fit a well-established pattern. In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, killing 290 civilians, an act the US later described as a tragic accident while never issuing an apology or compensation matching international standards for similar incidents. This